10 months ago

Thanks MrSilk, I'm glad someone is having as good a time as I do with this deck.

Your alterations are all great. The main reason my version is composed this way is mostly due to the time that I chose to build it. Then, Beseech the Queen was a little difficult to get my hands on because it hadn't yet been reprinted. On top of that, the only reason I'm not running Fiend Hunter + Reveillark
is because they didn't exist until several months later.

I originally had three Scour in the deck but I moved them to the sideboard and eventually they fell out of rotation. Since I picked up the Snow-covered basic lands though, I may sneak it back in. Basically, the deck plays a very hard game and I was getting a lot of guff for gutting people's decks.

Pariah + Stuffy Doll
is meant as a back-up. I can only think of one game I've played that it was absolutely necessary, wherein a player removed all my Enchanted Evenings from the game. So Stuffy Doll threatened a draw until I could find three Oblivion Ring to manually kill them. My Stuffy Doll plays are often on turn 5 when I don't have Enchanted Evening.~~~~~

In regard to your questions:1, There are exactly 33% lands in the deck. This is for my comfort mostly, but if you're using the deck in an online game then that may be the issue. Most shuffling algorithms will shuffle far better than we might by hand so the land-to-non-land ratio can get sidelined. I can't guarantee that this will fix it, but you can try to pair down the following cards to three copies each: Stuffy Doll, Echoing Calm, Oblivion Ring, Pariah. If your composition is still similar to my version then that would give you about 40% lands, which I consider to be "flooded" lol.

If you're not using it online then the above suggestion could still work, but I would just spend some extra time shuffling between games.

During the game you only have two options every turn. Either A, Continue with your own plan and get closer to finishing the combo you want; or B, Disrupt your opponent's plan by removing one of their important permanents. If you are doing either of these things then you're on the right track, but don't get discouraged if you have to keep spending your turns on dealing with your opponent because the more turns you spend the higher probability that your winning draw is on the next turn.

On turn 5, if you don't have a complete combo (given the opening hand in this example) then you should have just under 20% probability to draw what you need and anything you draw that isn't part of the combo can be used to control the field, save your lifepoints, or tutor for the missing piece.

Beyond turn 5 your focus should be on disrupting your opponent. So hold on to Angel's Grace as long as possible and concentrate on removing threats. Do not hesitate to throw Pariah on one of your opponent's creatures if you're in the shit. That one enchantment has saved me more times than any other card in the deck!

In the future I'm going to improve this build with a set of Inquisition of Kozilek for sharper removal. So use those if you have a few copies and your first three turns should be very comfortable.

1 year ago

The hydra requires the boots to make it hasty and to protect it. I personally have lost too many games with my combo decks by casting creatures that get countered, exiled, destroyed, wiped. I would eliminate the hydra. The rest of the deck doesn't make a ton of mana to make it worth it without the infinite combo (casting little hydras just to survive is demoralizing). I recommend Commune with the Gods and Devil's Play. You can use a Devil's Play from the graveyard (sent there by the commune that helped you get your creature for the combo). The Pariah
+
Stuffy Doll
protection combo will be too slow I think, plus it makes you splash white (needing expensive Flooded Strands :p)Also the Asceticism is rather expensive in mana and dollars. I've saved more combos with Negate than anything. Also consider Commune with Nature if you want to go more green or Taigam's Scheming if you want to go more blue (and if you do, I would definitely use Muddle the Mixture)

2 years ago

Since you have so many possible combos that use them, I'd try 3 to start and work from there. Choose your favorites for now.

The first card I think should be cut is Goblin Assault. I could understand if you had more goblins or "when nontoken creature ETB" effects, but I can only imagine specific board states where the extra 1/1 is a threat.

I also wouldn't consider Pariah
+
Stuffy Doll
in this deck. You don't have any tutoring (which is going to be a recurring problem trying to get combo pieces together), so you're basically crossing your fingers for the combo. At least with the others there is more than one combo the cards can fit into. This one stands alone.

Lightning Helix needs to be cut too. It's an amazing card in any other format, but I value spot removal in EDH that isn't limited to a specific amount of damage (i.e. ). You can sub in Path to Exile in it's place.

Even with these substitutions, I'm not sure how else to squeeze in some of your other combo pieces since I feel like you're trying to have the deck play two different roles. As it stands, your deck seems more Beatdown than Combo. If someone else can see how to mix these two themes better, all power to you, but I find that lack of card draw and tutors isn't conducive to busting out infinite combos.

If you put in any of these, it is essentially a permanent version of Quest for Pure Flame, so I would swap it with that. I personally don't like Grafted Wargear, so I would probably swap that for something else if you decide to put anything in, but if you like it, then it should stay. thats really just more a personal preference of mine because all of my "friends" run a ton of artifact removal.

Academy Rector might be good for getting free enchantments, especially if any are high cost. as a nice bonus, it is a good block choicce, and it can be killed by flipping avacyn, which might be what you want to do with it.

Murder Investigation could be a backup for if avacyn gets killed off at some point. at the very least, it gives you a nice army to chump block with while avacyn gets over her summoning sickness.

well, thats about everything I can think of for this deck. some of it (especially the early suggestions) probably wont work out in a fast meta as they are kinda slow, but if you get into a more casual meta, they could seriously buff the deck. awesome idea, too. definitely gets a +1

also, I dont really know the EDH ban list too well, so I might have reccomended a bunch of banned cards by accident. oh well.

2 years ago

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